the problem is that starting a new dating site and getting traction is incredibly difficult and expensive.

I spend the majority of my time working with clients looking to get traction in the dating market, some are dating sites, some are companies looking to address the issue of the “cold start”, when a membership database begins at zero people.

It will be interesting to see if these new ideas grab the interest of the dating public.

I think you’re absolutely right. I run Ignighter.com, where we are trying everyday to make dating a more social experience.

Data portability is definitely a huge next step, especially for next gen dating sites like our’s. We are always saying that sites like Match are “create your own blind date”, but that never really happens in the real world. In real life, you go out with your friends and meet new people in groups. I think it will only be a matter of time until more sites realize that there is a huge disconnect between the way we currently date online and how we meet people in real life.

I really like your point about the blog widgets, this is also something we’re working on because we too think it will be important.

Keep up the great work!

Adam

I agree with Jas. Most legacy dating sites just don’t work anymore. After a couple of years separated, I joined one a few weeks ago and found it took a long time to communicate with anyone. Hence, TalkAboutADate, which is all about easy conversations.

Keep on writing.
Greg

Long time reader as you know but rarely comment. Mainly because I agree with you (almost all of the time :)

I was looking at Flex from version 1 for a dating site a couple of years ago (that’s why I thought I would pipe up about this post) and I work in the space (head up interactive sitting between creative, technology and digital marketing delivering solutions & strategies for brands).

The thing is this – air and flex 3 are only just coming into their own, as much as I love them the bark is louder than the bite, kind of pains me to say but its fact. In over two years you can count the number of crash hot commercial flex apps that were not developed by adobe (or an adobe partner agency that is getting free kit) on 3 fingers.

They work for online catalogues because the content isn’t changing that often, regularly yes but every minute, no.

In addition the infrastructure driving those services is substantial, often in-house origin servers & oracle db.

New license fees on flash media server could start to change this.

Air is onto something and Flex is great for taking enterprise applications to the web, but pure online business, dating, travel… yeah some great user benefits and build time is good but if you really care about usability and design build in Ajax and incorporate flash.

I’m the first to agree that 99.9% of dating sites are crap (sorry guys they just are) but flex takes time to load (imagine the abandonment) or to download something to their desktop given current concerns of security and privacy in online dating.

Cheers Dave

Jas
p.s what’s the average UV to registering user in the space?

EuropeanKiss.org is a social dating community with all the features you mentioned. above and much more.

1-on-1 flash based Instant Messenger with live audio, video and text chat, video profile recording, unlimited video uploads, post unlimited photos, community group features, including group chat rooms with group audio/video streaming or private, group photo galleries, group message/discussion boards, group polls, profile/photo rating, profile comments, photo contests, view local and global online members, home page show you if your hotlisted friends are online, RSS feeds for new users and news.

Firstly.. there are a couple of sites that have toolbar downloads which arn’t exactly desktop widgets but function in the same way. It alerts you if you have a message, smile etc. Date.ca and American singles both do this. Off the top of my head. I can’t remember other sites.

As for social networking and dating. UM YEA! The fact of the matter is that a lot of people meet singles through their friends or friends friends… now match.com has tried to touch down on this by coming out with “match my friends” instead…. what dating sites need to do is to integrate social networking features while remaining a dating site.

The people on the site would not only be searching for singles but also have a community to take part in. One step towards this is having features. Other features to move towards this logic is to easily see which of your hotlisted friends are online, more ways to communicate other then sending winks etc. More picture uploads, comments.

There is a wide variety of things that can be done without transforming into a social networking site completely. Anyways. Those are my inital thoughts.

People tend to go to one stop shop sites these days where they can do everything from one place.

“Windows Vista” Gadgets and “Windows” Desktop Message Notifier (both features) a first in the online dating industry.

Gadgets are easy-to-use mini programs that give you information at a glance in real-time and Message Notifier is a Windows tool that sits in your system tray and notifies you when there are new mail messages.

EuropeanKiss currently provides two gadgets:

Quick Stats Gadget:

-Receive e-mail and interested member alerts
-See how many members have viewed your profile
-View your photo rating
-See how many local singles are currently logged
-See how many local new members

New Users Gadget:

-Randomly shows new users photos based on your gender preference

Check out http://www.europeankiss.org